Weighing The Anchors

Taking A Bite

In the 1960s and early `70s, the average ``sound bite`` on an evening newscast was 40 seconds. Today, the average is 10 seconds.

Based on those averages, here`s what viewers might have heard 20 years ago if Abraham Lincoln`s ``Gettysburg Address`` made the nightly news:

``Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

``Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.``

Here`s what viewers would hear today:

``Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that . . . .``